Page 84 of Guy's Girl
The farm itself is magical. Klara leads them out the back door, onto a wide-open field lined with fruit trees and vegetable plants. She points out each species to Ginny, which Adrian translates in her ear: “Sweet corn over there,” he whispers. “Apples over there. Green peas and sour cherry in the field opposite.” The whisper tickles the back of her neck and makes her shiver.
“Sour cherry!” Ginny perks up. “That’s the wine your grandmother makes.”
Ginny can’t read Adrian’s expression. “That’s right.”
“Can we go over there?”
“Of course.”
Adrian tells the others where they’re headed, then leads her over to the opposite field.
The sour cherry tree is the most beautiful tree Ginny has ever seen.
The cherries are at peak ripeness. Unlike regular cherries, which are so dark they could be called purple, sour cherries are a vivid red, bright as apples or lipstick or the color you use to draw hearts all over your paper when you’re in love. From a distance, they don’t even look like fruit; they look, impossibly, like roses that have defied the laws of nature and grown from a tree instead of a bush.
Ginny walks through the field slowly. Every now and then, she reaches out to touch a cherry, rubbing her thumb gently along its smooth skin.
“Want to try one?” Adrian asks.
“Yes, please.”
He searches the closest tree until he finds the two brightest, so red they look ready to burst. He places one in her palm and keeps the other for himself.
She stares down at the berry. She doesn’t bring it up to her mouth.
“Nervous?” he asks.
She nods.
“Why? Because it’s sour?”
“No.” She bites her lip. She’d never told him about the fear that clutches her before each meal. The anxiety over what might happen.
“What is it, then?”
“It’s just...” She inhales and looks up at Adrian, sour cherrystill wobbling in her open palm. “The thing about bulimia is... it’s not just throwing up. You probably already know this, of course. Most people do. But, um... it’s also about overeating. Bingeing, I mean. Bingeing and purging.”
Adrian watches her. His hand closes around the cherry and lowers to his side. “I did know that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I, um...” He uses his free hand to scratch the back of his neck. “I’ve sort of been researching bulimia since the day after the pub crawl.”
“You have?”
“Yeah.” He laughs nervously. “I don’t know if that’s weird or anything. But. Yeah. I’ve learned a lot. Especially about the binge-purge cycle and how one feeds into the other.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, obviously, when you binge, it makes you want to throw up. That’s the obvious part of the cycle. The part that people don’t often think about is that purging is actually a catalyst for bingeing, too.” As Adrian speaks, he picks up speed, as if he needs to spit all this information out while he still has the nerve. “You throw up all your food before your body gets the chance to absorb the nutrients it needs, so, even though you feel like you just put way too much food into your body, you actually didn’t get enough. You’re starving. Your body is starving. It thinks you’re living through some sort of famine. That food is scarce. So, once you finally go to eat again, even if you have no intention of bingeing, your body will want to. Your body will think,Oh, you’re finally feeding me? Great, then let’s stuff as much food as possible into ourselves; Lord only knows when we’ll get another chance to eat.”
Adrian pauses to catch his breath. “Does that make sense?”
Ginny stares down at the bright-red cherry in her palm. “Actually, yeah,” she says quietly. “It makes perfect sense.”
“But you don’t have to stay stuck in the loop forever, Ginny. All the research says that once you start to eat regular intermittent meals and snacks, your body will recalibrate. It won’t feel the need to stuff itself every time it eats.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” She casts her eyes down the long line of sour cherry trees. “You know, it’s funny, the way you’re describing bulimia. How you make it sound like my body is separate from me. That it has instincts of its own that are capable of overriding conscious decisions I think I’m making.”
